


Chemistry

by iopeneditbeforechristmas



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood, F/M, Fluff, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 04:32:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4166025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iopeneditbeforechristmas/pseuds/iopeneditbeforechristmas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They'd change the world, but first they'd live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chemistry

**Author's Note:**

> Like in my previous fic, I captured the personalities of both Hange and Levi a little differently, as they're children and therefore lack the trauma they've both experienced in canon.

People can never seem to agree on children. How to raise them, how to treat them, how they act. Some say they’re beacons of hope, shining examples to the rest of the world on how to ignore differences between each other. To these people, children are walking advertisements for the possibility of tolerance and equality. Others take the more pessimistic route and point out that you’ll always find some child somewhere who’s bullying another kid for something they don’t like. Kids will always find the difference in each other and point it out, they say. Even they just can’t be nice.

One thing people can all accept, though, is that not everyone can fit in, and that sometimes, being a child is not all it’s cut out to be. Differences can be accepted or they can be mocked, and in the end, someone is going to experience the latter.

For Zoë Hange, on her first day at school, this was a possibility but not necessarily a certainty. Her previous school had had shades of this phenomenon. Being an intelligent girl, and one with a little less money than her peers, she wasn’t exactly the outcast, but nor was she particularly well-liked either. For most of her classmates, she was just…there. Nothing more, nothing less. Hange hadn’t minded this, because they had been nice when she needed them to be, and she hadn’t moved school for this reason, but the possibility that it could be worse was resolutely stuck to the back of her mind.

Maybe, Hange thought, it was because most of the books she read featured children in this sort of situation. Some of these books had been good, some atrocious, but none of the girls in them had ever really had friends. Occasionally Hange wondered why there weren’t more stories featuring popular girls, but she reasoned that maybe it was because their stories didn’t need to be told.

Something Hange didn’t need to be told was to go downstairs, but her mother decided to yell at her to do it anyway. Hange sighed, but picked up her backpack and trudged down to the kitchen. Her mother had spoiled her this morning, waking her up later than usual and making Hange’s favourite breakfast. She hadn’t needed to; it wasn’t like Hange was nervous. Not really. Besides, by the time the bacon and eggs had filled her stomach she had all but settled any remnants of the nerves that had secretly plagued her the night before.

“Ready?” her mother asked with a grin. Hange could have sworn the woman was more excited for this than she was.

“Yep,” she said, nodding. Her schoolbag was by the door, one of the only parts of her uniform she was allowed customise. Otherwise Hange was dressed simply, in a faded brown jumper and skirt several shades lighter than the intended colour. Her shoes were grey rather than black and scuffed in several areas, and the glasses she had to wear were sellotaped in the middle. Hange didn’t really mind the second-hand clothes she had had to wear most of her life, but it was because the rest of her uniform was so old that she cherished her bag; clean, red and new.

“Come on Zoë dear, we’ll be late for school.”

Hange looked up at her mother and nodded, stepping out of the house with confidence that was only a little bit forced. There were other kids doing so as well, calling out to each other and hopping in cars, some together. Older children chivvied along their little siblings, parents wrestled screaming toddlers into car seats, and those daring enough to show off in front of their peers rode skateboards and bikes down the pavement. It was the very epitome of peaceful suburban dream. Hange smiled nervously, wondering whether she’d be able to slot into the paradise she was witnessing.

It all seemed so rigid that she wondered whether or not she’d be stuck looking in from the outside forever.

The ride to school took two minutes, Hange’s mother’s old Ford pulling up outside the tall black gates in no time. They had both seen the school before, but Hange took a moment to fully appreciate it again. An old building, it had been renovated from a townhouse into a school by the previous owner, who’d had an affinity for children and teaching and now sat on the Board of Management. The headmistress, whom Hange had met on her tour a few months ago, was a nice woman, but no-nonsense and almost certainly strict. Hange gulped when she remembered the teacher’s severe bun and crisp voice. 

They walked in, past the other students, and Hange drew more than a couple interested glances. She looked back at some of them, waving. They didn’t seem to appreciate this, but she tried nonetheless.

“Come on Zoë,” her mother sighed in exasperation, “We’re going to be late to class. Now, where is it? They said…classroom 5B, which should be just along here. Ah! Here it is! Over here, Zoë!”

Hange obediently followed her mother through one of the school doors and into the junior wing of the school. It was pretty, but there was a sanitary feel to the whole place, as though all the spontaneous enjoyment had been sucked out of the place, to be replaced with planned satisfaction. On either side of the corridor were doors, a window set in each and a number and a name pinned on the woodwork. Hange and her mother walked past all of them until they reached one that was painted red. There were pictures of butterflies stuck on the wall outside and the name on the door read Mr Halloran, 5B.

“Should we knock?” Hange asked.

“No, we’ll just go in, it’s only a classroom,” her mother said. She raised a hand to push open the door, but it opened before she could. A kindly face peered out. It was relatively old, with green eyes framed by wiry spectacles, but the wrinkles spoke of laughter and of living lightly on the world. Upon seeing Hange, the face smiled.

“You must be Zoë,” it said, “I’m Mr Halloran. Come on in and I’ll introduce to your classmates.”

“I’ll be leaving then, Zoë,” Hange’s mother said, giving her a quick hug, “I’ll see you later!”

And then she was gone and Hange was alone. The nerves started to set in again, but Hange ignored them and plastered a smile on her face. Eventually she forgot that it was forced, and started to grin in real excitement. Look at all the people her own age! New friends, playmates, people to talk to. The school looked nice enough, and so did Mr Halloran, and so surely all the people there were nice too?

Hange followed Mr Halloran into the classroom, eyes taking in every detail of the interior. Shiny plastic blue seats, clean desks, windows open and the sun streaming in from outside. It smelled nice too, kind of like lavender. There was a faint buzz, like that of a swarm of bees, coming from the children seated in front of her. Most of them looked happy and glad to be there. There was one kid, however, who was different. He sat alone at the back of the classroom, either ignored by or himself ignoring the people sitting at his table. He was shorter than the rest of them, his dark hair falling into his eyes. Hange tilted her head in interest. She wondered why nobody was talking to the boy. He looked nice enough.

“Class,” Mr Halloran said, clapping his hands. Immediately the buzz stopped, and all faces turned to look at him, “We have a new student today. I’d like everybody to meet Zoë Hange. Now, I expect you all to be very nice and welcoming, and I’m sure she’ll fit right in.” Hange smiled and waved to the class.

“Hi!” she said awkwardly, “Um...you can call me Hange, instead of Zoë. Most people do.”

The class stared back at her, clearly at a loss of what to make of this new girl, with her old clothes and her broken glasses and the exuberant personality. Hange hovered up at the front of the classroom for another minute, wondering what to do.

“Just pick a seat, Zoë,” Mr Halloran told her kindly, “Anywhere that’s free, I don’t have assigned seating.”

Hange nodded, and sat down at the front. She’d have liked to sit with the boy down at the back, because he looked so alone, but that involved navigating her way through a maze of chairs and tables and might have looked weird.

“Well, we’ll start with Science first!” Mr Halloran said. He seemed excited. “Now, can anyone tell me what electricity actually is?”

Hange’s hand shot up; electricity was easy, she’d read about it in a book a few weeks ago. Mr Halloran looked around the classroom and eventually landed on her.

“Very well, Zoë, tell us what electricity is.”

“It’s a form of energy,” she said breathlessly, “Resulting from the existence of charged particles, either static when these particles accumulate or as a current.”

“Wow! That’s a very detailed definition, Zoë. Where’d you learn that?”

“I read it in a book. It was really good! There was electricity in it, but loads of other stuff too, like particles and what they do and changes of state and everything!”

Mr Halloran smiled, and promised that he’d show her some more books if he found them. Hange decided that she liked him. That said, the lesson ended up getting a little bit boring, and she was pleased when the bell rang to signal break. An ear-splitting shriek ripped through the classroom as twenty chairs were pushed back in unison. Hange was swept along in the wave of students that thronged out of the door, barely able to grab her snack from her bag.

She followed the train outside, where it immediately split into different groups like they’d practiced it. A group of girls started to skip, flipping a long rope in circles as two others tried to run under it. It caught one of them on the bum, and Hange stifled a small smile as the rest of the group joined in with the girl’s laughter. They didn’t look too bad, anyway.

Hange made her way over to the group, smiling tentatively. Her mother had always said people preferred it when you smiled. “Mind if I play?” she asked. The girls looked her up and down, before one of them – the tallest, with strawberry blonde hair and a confident smile – sighed.

“I suppose so,” she said flippantly, “But do you think you can you keep up?”

“I think so,” Hange said. She’d played skipping a couple of times before, and hadn’t been too bad at it.

“Okay then,” the girl told her, “I’m Holly. These are Sophie, Ella and Zara.” Holly jerked her thumb at the girls standing beside her. Hange smiled and waved at them.

“Why don’t we let Zoë go first?” Zara suggested.

Holly nodded. “Might as well,” she said, beckoning for Hange to take her place beside the rope. “We’re going to try double skipping. You can go with Zara, cos it was her idea.”

Hange nodded. Zara stepped up beside her and Holly began to swing the rope. The first time, it whacked Hange on the foot before she could react. Holly sighed in annoyance, but Zara smiled at her and Hange let herself be coaxed into another round. It was a stupid idea. Try as she might, she just couldn’t jump in time. They let her have a couple more goes, but eventually even Zara lost her patience and Hange was swapped for someone else.

She wandered off towards the edge of the playground, towards the tiny copse of trees where the bigger kids played. The boy from the back of the class was sitting at the top of a little rise of grass, looking down on the rest of the kids, young and old. He looked interesting. Hange was about to go over to him when a bell rang, probably to tell them all to go back inside.

Just as she was about to turn back to go inside, the boy looked at her and smiled. 

* * *

 

“So, how was your first day?” Hange’s mother asked as she ladled stew into their bowls, “Not too bad?”

“No,” Hange replied evenly, shovelling meat and carrots into her mouth to avoid having to say anything more. She didn’t want to have to tell her mother than eventually Mr Halloran had had to ask her to stop putting her hand up because she knew too much, or that because of this whispers of ‘nerd’ and ‘know-it-all’ had started to follow her wherever she went, or that Holly and Zara and their friends had completely ignored Hange when she had tried to say goodbye to them at the end of the day. She didn’t want to have to admit her failure to her mother.

Hange’s mother had always been a social woman, and this had been passed on to her daughter; however, where her mother had charisma and the gift of the gab, Hange was strange and a little awkward and didn’t really know when to stop talking. There had always been an expectation that she would bring home friends, end up popular, with people falling over their feet to talk to her.

That had never happened, and though Hange knew her mother didn’t really mind and would never blame her daughter for anything like this, Hange also knew how much she wanted to feed Hange’s friends and act like the perfect mother for them. Which was why Hange could never tell her that that was pretty much never going to happen at this school.

“I’m going to go to bed,” she muttered, faking a yawn. “Today was really tiring.”

“Have a good night, dear!" Hange's mother said at once, "I’ll bring up some milk later.”

“No, it’s okay, I don’t really need it.”

Once she was ensconced in the peace of her room, Hange let out a deep breath she’d been building up the entire day without even realising. It wasn’t too late, she told herself. Just because the first day hadn’t been that great didn’t mean she couldn’t change their opinions of her. All it would take was a little effort. But first impressions counted, she remembered, and if there was one thing Hange was sure of it was that hers had not been good. 

* * *

 

The next day went much the same. Hange couldn’t stop herself from blurting out the answers to some of the questions Mr Halloran asked, but today there were things she didn’t know, opportunities to learn, and she applied herself with zeal. She could see that even if the rest of the class didn’t appreciate that, Mr Halloran did, and so Hange continued to take copious notes about everything. By the time the bell rang for break she had almost forgotten that she was nervous.

That ended when she went outside. The class had split into the same groups as before – Holly, Zara, Sophie and Ella were skipping, some of the rest were playing electric piggy, and others had decided to colonise the makeshift huts that were dotted around the yard. Hange ignored all of them. Biting her lip, she looked around desperately for a group that looked in anyway friendly. Eventually her eyes settled on the little hill overlooking the playground, where the same boy was sitting.

She made her way over to him, ignoring the rest when they looked at her weirdly. She wondered what this boy had done to make him a social pariah, and decided that if it was anything like what she had – or rather hadn’t – done, he deserved a friend.

“Hi!” she grinned, “I’m Hange. Is it okay if I sit here?” “

Oh,” the boy said, looking up at her, “Yeah, that’s okay.”

Hange felt an internal firework of victory go off inside her, and wondered why she cared so much.

“So what’s your name?” Hange asked.

The boy looked at her and shrugged. “Levi. I thought yours was Zoë.”

“Yeah, my full name’s Zoë Hange, but everyone says it doesn’t suit me, and I prefer Hange.”

“Oh,” Levi said, looking up at her, “I don’t think it does suit you. It’s too girly.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being girly!”

“Well...it’s too proper. Just like everybody else here.”

Hange laughed, “Yeah, they are pretty proper, aren’t they? Everything here seems like a dream, but it all looks so forced, too. I don’t like it.”

“I don’t either." Levi said. "It doesn’t like me back, though.”

“Yeah,” Hange sighed, leaning back on the hill, “I guess it doesn’t like either of us.” 

* * *

 

Hange talked a lot with Levi after that. Both outcasts for one reason or another, the two were left with little option but to turn to each other. Fire-forged friends, that was it. Hange knew she annoyed Levi sometimes, and sometimes he annoyed her, but that was what being friends was all about. You weren’t always supposed to be nice to each other, because that wasn’t fair to either of you. If you didn’t have some points of disagreement, however trivial, then you couldn’t learn more about each other.

Eventually, Hange invited Levi over to her house. She waited before deciding to do it, and the invitation itself was awkward and slightly strange, but they got over that and by Friday afternoon both Levi and Hange were standing on the doorstep of Hange’s house.

The door opened before either of them had a chance to ring the doorbell. Immediately afterwards Levi was subjected to all the fawning and gushing Hange had known her mother would engage in. Though her short friend kept the same disinterested face throughout the entire proceedings and pretended not to like it when Hange’s mother hugged him, Hange knew that secretly he was enjoying the attention. She didn’t know what kind of home life Levi had, but she guessed it wasn’t one that was particularly nice.

They had fish for dinner. Ordinarily Hange didn’t like salmon, but she ate it up because Levi was. Besides, it made her mother happy.

After dinner, they headed upstairs to Hange’s room. Given that there were only two of them and her mother didn’t take up much space, she’d got the largest room, which had a dormer window facing onto the front of the street and yellow walls.

“Your mum’s a good cook, shitty glasses,” Levi remarked.

“Shitty glasses?” Hange asked, amused.

“Yeah,” Levi shrugged, “Felt like it.”

“Fine then, I’ll call you little guy.”

“Hey! I’m not that short!”

“Yes you are. Just face facts Levi, you’re going to be stuck a midget forever.”

“How do you know?”

“Science!” Hange declared.

Levi groaned. “What is your obsession with science?”

“It’s interesting! Hey, wanna do an experiment?”

“No.”

“Aw come on, we can do one I’ve already done, it’s really cool, and I promise I won’t get your clothes dirty.”

“No,” Levi repeated sternly. He folded his arms and assumed an air of superior indifference to the wonders of biology, chemistry and physics.

“Pleeeeease, Levi?”

Levi continued to look away from Hange for a while, arms crossed and face set. “Fine,” he muttered, “Let’s do an experiment about shit.”

“Yeah!” Hange whooped, “Let’s go get it ready. For science, huh?”

“Yeah,” Levi said, “For science!” 

* * *

 

Science remained a strong force in their relationship. Hange was obsessed with it, and Levi humoured her enough to develop a passing interest in the subject. Whereas Hange’s interests were fairly reputable, however, Levi remained resolutely uninterested in anything that wasn’t involved with excrement of any kind. It was a joke, and Hange knew it was a joke, and Levi knew Hange knew it was a joke, but they kept it going anyway. They had lots of little in-jokes like that, such that it made conversations between them sound like some sort of code half the time. Hange liked it. She liked having a friend, one she could talk to about anything. One that was special to her and one to whom she herself was special.

They never did fit in. Hange mentioned this to Levi, once, when they were lying on the grass down at the nearby lake. The day was warm and beautiful, the sun creating patterns on the ground as it shone through glossy trees. Levi shrugged when she said it.

“Well, think about it like this. The world is like those shitty snow-globes you get at stalls and shit. It’s a glass dome and we’re the ones looking in on the outside at their chocolate box lives.”

Hange nodded. “Wow Levi, didn’t know there was a philosopher in you.”

Levi grunted, “Just saying what I think.”

“Yeah. Guess that means that we’re the ones who’ve got to shake it up.”

“The people who do that are usually the ones that don’t fit in,” Levi agreed, “I suppose we have a choice. Try and pretend like we’re on the inside, or fuck it all and go about trying to change the world.”

“Nah,” Hange said, “We’ll never change the world. We’re just us, right?”

“Yeah. Just us. But hey, we could always try.”

“You really want to try?” Hange asked softly. 

“Not really. Maybe. I dunno.”

“We should live first,” Hange decided, “We can’t do anything until we live ourselves.”

Levi nodded. Hange stretched out her hand and took his rough palm in hers. They stayed like that for a while, just lying there on the grass and enjoying each others’ company. They’d change the world, eventually, maybe, if they tried hard enough. But that wasn’t nearly as important as living for themselves and nobody else.

They’d change the world, but first they’d live.

**Author's Note:**

> Holly, Zara, Ella and Sophie were actually all named because they're friends of my sister, who is the same age as Levi and Hange in this fic (about 10/11). I'd like to take this opportunity to say that no libel against any Hollys, Zaras, Ellas or Sophies was intended. I was originally planning to include more skipping games, but couldn't remember any I used to play so just went with double skipping. Electric piggy is an incredibly fun game with is like piggy in the middle but with a lot of people and one piggy; the ball goes around like usual, but if the piggy catches whoever is holding the ball at the time, they're out and that person is in the middle.


End file.
